SPÄTHERBST:Late fall might have begun for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after her CDU and CSU Bundestag members rejected the man she chose to lead the parliamentary group. Volker Kauder, a close Merkel ally who has overseen the group for 13 years, lost in a secret ballot to challenger Ralph Brinkhaus. The result sent shockwaves — which made things wobble, but not yet collapse — through the German capital.

By defying Merkel, conservative MPs sent the chancellor the obvious signal that they are dissatisfied with her stewardship. And while Brinkhaus isn’t exactly a Merkel opponent or harsh critic, the vote likely further limits Merkel’s legroom, Matthew Karnitsching reports. (Her two partners in government, the SPD and CSU, aren’t proving easy to handle.) Brinkhaus campaigned on the promise that he’ll bring “new impulses” to the role and act as a bridge-builder between the different factions in the group, and told ZDF that “there’s not much of a difference” between himself and Kauder. If things go well for Merkel, the vote will have acted as a steam valve to release some of the pressure in her party and group — for now.

GOOD MORNING: Theresa May may know what it’s like to have colleagues constantly sharpening their knives, but it’s a new experience for the German chancellor. Merkel being Merkel, she told an audience at industry association BDI’s annual conference just a few hours before the vote about what was actually keeping her up at night: “The question of whether we can maintain closed value chains is one that concerns me very, very much.”

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PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH SAJID JAVID

PUT PRESSURE ON BRUSSELS, PLEASE: U.K. Home Secretary Sajid Javid was in Madrid on Tuesday and called Playbook before heading to Berlin. His message to his counterparts in Spain and Germany: Push the European Commission to be more active in the future security relationship between the U.K. and the EU.

“To date the overall response of the Commission on security has been that ‘when you leave, you’ll be a third country,'” Javid said. “The Commission are not ambitious enough on the issue.” He wants Brussels “to recognize that security isn’t a bargaining chip. It is something that the citizens of Europe would expect their leaders to prioritize.”

Britain is ready to pay a price for continued cooperation: “Let’s take the arrest warrant or Europol — we of course would abide by the rules of these instruments,” Javid told Playbook, countering criticism that the British government would cherry-pick on security. He said there should be “some sensible mechanism” to allow for disputes to be resolved, but “we accept that as they are EU instruments, and if we wish to take part in them, we of course must observe the EU rulebook for them.”

Why shouldn’t Britain be treated as a third country? The U.K. accepts that once it leaves the club, “obviously things need to change,” with the country losing its voting and decision-making rights in EU institutions, and potentially needing a “separate legal footing for the continued relationship,” Javid said, citing for example rules on sharing data. “[But] we don’t accept that the relationship needs to be that of a third country,” he insisted. “Given the role that Britain has played to date, in European security being one of the countries that were shaping the original arrangements that we have today, given the contribution that the U.K. makes to security — we are clearly among the top three or top four contributors.”

The British proposal is on the table: In its Chequers plan, the U.K. suggested negotiating a separate treaty on security cooperation “that puts us on a proper legal footing,” Javid said. While the British government is planning “for all eventualities,” including a no deal on security, “whatever the fallbacks are, whether it’s on an arrest warrant or data sharing, they’re not going to be as good as the security relationships that we share today.”

Warning: “I don’t think anyone wants to be in a situation where there was no deal on security. Let’s say — God forbid — there’s a terrorist attack on European soil somewhere. It could be Britain; it could be somewhere in the EU. And if people — if the public — then knew that that could have been stopped if only the politicians had put common sense and the people before bureaucracy and red tape, then I think that no politician wants to be in that situation.”

His message to governments: If we can’t agree on the future economic partnership or the Irish border, let’s work on something we can agree on — security. The clock is ticking, but “I think we do have time to agree on the fundamentals and first of all on the principle that we want to continue cooperation,” Javid said. “Secondly, that should be in the formal treaty that provides a proper legal basis for the cooperation … And thirdly I think such agreement should name the products, the structures that we want to continue cooperating on.”

Will that be hard to sell in the UK after Salzburg? No, he said. “In Britain, all political parties, all commentators, whether they voted Leave, whether they voted Remain — they’re all totally united on this, because it’s not controversial to say that we should share information in an age … when terrorist criminals don’t recognize borders. It’s just common sense and that’s why it thankfully hasn’t been impacted by other discussions around the negotiation process.”

Reality check: The then-Brexit Secretary David Davis tried that exact line of attack in a speech in June, arguing that terrorists “don’t check the passports of their victims” before carrying out their attacks. While we can’t fault that logic, it didn’t do any good then (the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier effectively told him to stop blaming the EU for the consequences of quitting the Union), and it’s unlikely to do Javid any good now.

THE ART OF THE BLUFF: The U.K. wants Brussels to believe it has a plan for a no-deal Brexit: It produced numerous papers again this week, unveiling in the most granular detail a picture of what leaving the EU without a deal will mean for citizens and businesses, which were meant to demonstrate that the government is prepared to walk away from the negotiations if necessary. But “there’s no indication yet that Brussels is buying it,” POLITICO’s Charlie Cooper writes.

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TODAY’S BUSINESS

DOMBROVSKIS’ CALL FOR GREEN FINANCE: Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis tonight is set to make a plea to the financial sector — and savers — to help reach the Paris climate goals. “The time to act against climate change is now, and Europe is determined to lead this fight,” he told Playbook ahead of his speech at the One Planet Summit tonight (Brussels time) in New York. “We have already cut our carbon emissions by over 22 percent, on the way towards our target of a 40 percent cut by 2030. And we will stand by our Paris agreement targets, no matter what.”

No matter what? The Commission proposed creating an EU-wide definition of what is “green” and stricter requirements for financial companies to disclose how environmentally friendly their investments are. The proposals fell flat, proving to be too much to swallow for conservative governments. And that’s before the Commission even started trying to answer the question that could divide France and Germany: Is nuclear green?

REST OF #UNGA: British PM Theresa May will speak toward the end of today’s morning session at the United Nations General Assembly, followed by a meeting with Donald Trump. Ahead of that meeting, our transatlantic reporting team of Annabelle Dickson, Doug Palmer and Jakob Hanke report that Trump’s trade demands are only adding to May’s Brexit woes. Trump, meanwhile, delivered his speech on Tuesday — but the reaction from world leaders wasn’t quite what he was expecting. And it turns out Norwegian PM Erna Solberg’s got game (h/t Matthias Lüfkens). Here’s today’s schedule for the U.N. summit and the livestream.

Who’s in charge of the EU’s foreign policy again? Compare these two press releases for yourself: “High Representative / Vice-President Federica Mogherini met, together with President Juncker, UN Secretary General António Guterres and African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat,” the External Action Service said. The European Commission’s write-up of the same meeting: “The Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat, the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, met … They were accompanied by senior officials from the three organisations, including Vice President/High Representative Federica Mogherini.”

THYSSEN TO MEET WITH RYANAIR CHIEF AS MORE STRIKES THREATEN TRAVEL PLANS: Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary will this morning meet with Employment Commissioner Marianne Thyssen. The meeting was scheduled at O’Leary’s request, and comes after the Irish budget carrier announced 190 flight cancelations for Friday due to cabin crew and pilot strikes. According to the company, some 30,000 passengers in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy and Germany will be affected.

BTW: There’s a battle raging between EU officials, diplomats and other inhabitants of Planet Schuman about whose version of a much-whispered-about story is correct: It seems both the Secretary-General of the European External Action Service Helga Schmid and her homologue, the Commission’s Martin Selmayr (both Germans!), want to become the EU’s first ambassador to post-Brexit Britain. Both had their institutions’ spokespeople deny they were harboring any such ambitions. But here’s the kernel of truth that’s firing up the rumor-mill: The EU is going to expand its diplomatic mission on Brexit Day, Jacopo Barigazzi reports.

NEWS UPDATE

FRANCE: The French center right wants Michel Barnier to be its main man in the European election. “Barnier is thinking about running” to be the conservative Spitzenkandidat, said a senior official from Les Républicains, confirming that an approach has been made by the party to the EU’s Brexit negotiator. (News of an approach was first reported by Le Point.) “The party has offered him to be the Spitzenkandidat for the EPP,” the official added. Zachary Young and Maïa de la Baume report.

POLAND: Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted to the Commission’s decision to refer Poland to the ECJ over its Supreme Court law, telling a press conference: “We are constantly in dialogue, but as you can see, the Commission decided to take a step that breaks this dialogue to some extent, or maybe it breaks it off seriously … How can the Dutch, Belgians, French, or West Germans understand what communism and then post-communism were if they did not experience it?”

Not going to make Warsaw happy either: Ukrainian human rights activist Lyudmyla Kozlovska is now in Brussels and will at 11:30 a.m. today speak in the European Parliament at an open ALDE session, our man in Poland Michał Broniatowski writes in to tell us. Kozlovska was issued a long-term visa by the Belgian government after a request by ALDE chief Guy Verhofstadt and the Greens’ Rebecca Harms. Kozlovska was in August expelled from the Schengen zone following a request from the Polish government. Earlier this month, she testified in the Bundestag after Germany gave her a two-week visa.

ITALY: Riccardo Puglisi, associate professor of economics at the University of Pavia, argues in an op-ed for POLITICO that it’s almost impossible for the Italian populist coalition to deliver on its campaign pledges without falling foul of EU rules on public spending.

SWITZERLAND: Johann Schneider-Ammann, the Swiss Federal Counsel member (aka economic affairs minister) resigned Tuesday, telling reporters that he wants to spend more time with his family. That won’t make things easier (and they are already difficult) for the ongoing negotiations about a new framework agreement between Switzerland and the EU: Schneider-Ammann was one of the members of the government pushing for a swift resolution. Switzerland is a “petit paradis,” appreciated and acknowledged around the globe, and where “almost everyone has a job,” Schneider-Ammann wrote in his resignation letter. “That others are amazed should always be our motivation to courageously seek renewal in stormy times.”

State of play: Swiss parliament is still undecided about whether to insist on protecting its services market from EU competitors and risk a no-deal scenario, or be flexible about the EU’s demands and risk alienating trade unions and right-wing parties alike. The clock is ticking, to borrow a phrase from Brexit negotiators — the important parts of the current relationship between Switzerland and the EU run only through the end of the year.

SWEDEN: Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, lost a confidence vote in parliament after the far-right Sweden Democrats backed the center-right opposition Alliance’s bid to oust the Social Democrats. The newly elected speaker of the Riksdag, Andreas Norlén from the Moderates, will lead talks toward forming the next government. The Moderates and their Alliance partners, who won 143 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag in September versus 144 for Löfven’s center-left bloc, have so far refused to countenance a formal coalition deal with the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, who took 62 seats (and helped to oust Löfven). Stephen Brown has the story.

MALTA: The supervision of Malta’s financial regulator over Pilatus Bank raises “significant concerns” but remained within the boundaries of EU law, the European Banking Authority said in a letter to MEPs after concluding a preliminary investigation into the actions of the Maltese Financial Services Authority. Bjarke Smith-Meyer has more for POLITICO Financial Services Pros.

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ISSUES OF TRANSPARENCY

A PLEA FOR (OTHERS’) TRANSPARENCY: “The Council is making huge efforts to hide how ‘consensus was reached’ on this or that issue. It is thereby undermining the foundations of European democracy,” MEP Yana Toom writes in to tell Playbook, explaining why Parliament is up for a proper fight with its co-legislator. “Last week, European media were filled with news about how political groups and individual members voted on the controversial copyright directive. The position of every single MEP has been clear, from the very beginning at committee level to the plenary stage. Yet, it is not clear how decisions in Council have been made, in particular at COREPER.”

Power struggle: Toom, a liberal MEP from Estonia, wants to change that, penning with Jo Leinen from the S&D a report on improving the transparency of the Council. “The Council is a European institution just as Commission and Parliament are. And the government representatives sitting there receive a mandate from the voters. However, any monitoring of how this mandate is actually implemented is reliably covered by a conspiracy of silence,” she argues. “The Council imagines itself to be a diplomatic body and simply ignores calls for more transparent decision-making.”

TRANSPARENCY? NOT FOR MEPs: Parliament is under no obligation to disclose how its elected representatives spend the expense allowances they receive on top of their salaries, the General Court of the ECJ ruled. The verdict will allow Parliament to continue to refuse to disclose how MEPs spend a controversial allowance of €4,416 per month — known as the “General Expenditure Allowance.” Maïa de la Baume has the write-up.

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